Tips For Handling Valuables During Your Move

When you’re planning a move, you need to be smart with how you handle your valuables. Even if you hire the most trusted movers in your area, you’re still, essentially, inviting strangers into your house to do work for you. I strongly believe that any legitimate company wouldn’t keep any employees around if they had a questionable reputation, but there’s always a risk of an item getting lost or damaged. For this reason, it’s always smartest and safest to move your own valuables, and not leave it to the moving company. Follow these tips to help you do it the right way.

What counts as valuables?

A crucial step towards protecting your valuables is establishing what you should be careful with.

• Jewelry – We urge all customers to handle their jewelry personally. If you are unable to for any reason, you should make a numbered inventory of all items so that you can verify that everything makes it to the new house in the same condition.

• Collectibles – If you have any collection that you value, it is usually best to handle it yourself. Of course, this could be a challenge, depending on what it is you’ve collected. Even if you have to wrap and pack your collection into its own box and pack it into your car, you’ll be saving yourself some stress and frustration over worrying about it. And again – if you are unable to do that for any reason, you should take a numbered inventory so that you can verify the contents right away at the new place.

• Medication – If you rely on any medication regularly, especially prescription medication, it is highly advised that you pack that up and take it with you. In the event that any boxes wind up buried in the wrong location, or anything else, you’re going to want to have any items that you truly need on hand with you.

How should you handle your valuables?

While it can be hard to set a guideline that would apply to all people all the time, we have some best-practices that can help you.

• Take it with you – Anything that you consider a small valuable should be with you at all times. For most people, the movers bring a truck with a majority of the belongings, and the people who are moving drive over in their own vehicle. You should bring all valuables with you in your own vehicle so that you, personally, are responsible for the things that you are most concerned with.

• Keep an inventory – This can be good advice even if you’re not moving. We recommend using little tags that you can use to actually keep a number on each item. You can cross reference the tags with a spreadsheet or numerated list so that you can quickly identify any missing jewelry. With today’s technology, it’s even easy to take a picture of each item and keep it as part of the spreadsheet. If you have any incident, whether it’s during a move or any other time, you have a photo that you can provide as proof of ownership.

• Pad everything properly – If you are moving your own valuables, you should be careful to protect everything. You can use bubble wrap or packing paper where it is needed. You can also use hand and face towels to wrap things that are fragile and protect them from scratches or dings within a box.